New social networking and social web tools are becoming available and are easing the process of customizing online social environments. With these developments in technology, core design efforts are being extended beyond usability for individual users and beginning to include notions of sociability for the engagement of communities of users. This thesis is an investigation of these developments. It is guided by the principal research question: how do you design for social engagement in an online social environment intended to facilitate interaction in a community of users? To address this question, this thesis presents a domain-community model developed from the communities of practice concept and the Work Domain Analysis model used in Cognitive Work Analysis. The domain-community model provides a basis for the design a composition of web components for an online social environment that will addresses issues of social engagement and domain effectiveness. In a case study, the domain-community model was used as a basis for the redesign of a social networking portal used by an international development leadership community called UCP-SARnet. A social network analysis of core members of UCP-SARnet was conducted before and after the portal was redesigned. From the social network analysis, it was concluded that the structure of UCP-SARnet was positively affected by the redesign: core group members reported they knew one another significantly more after the redesign of the website than before the redesign. User experience measures of the UCP-SARnet portal, website usage data, and a tally of website communication activity also changed significantly with the redesign of the website. This provided more evidence that a design informed by Cognitive Work Analysis and communities of practice produced a measurable effect on the structure of the UCP-SARnet online community. As such, this model can provide a basis for designers of online communities to more systematically account for social phenomena in relation to collective efforts in a given work domain. Furthermore, it is expected the effectiveness of the model can be taken forward with future work by refining the domain-community model, developing techniques to translate the model into interface concepts, and building practices for community-based research and design.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the theoretical and practical issues associated with the design, execution and analysis of an empirical evaluation of novel process control displays in a collaborative control room environment. An important feature of the thesis is how practical constraints associated with limited access to industry controllers were handled and how convergent lines of evidence were used to achieve the evaluation. As a novel research domain, hydropower systems (HPS) present many design challenges, because controllers must coordinate multiple domains across different time frames. If controllers are to maintain effective situation awareness and if they are to exercise effective control, the displays must integrate controllers’ problem solving across water, generation, market, and transmission concerns and across time frames. However, these needs are ignored in the current displays in a hydropower control room. The two new ecologically-inspired displays, called “Functional Displays”, evaluated in this thesis, are intended to overcome the above shortcomings. The evaluation was done with industry hydropower controllers and coordinators on a medium fidelity simulator which represented the working environment of a large hydropower control room. The core issue of this thesis is how the evaluation was conceptualized, operationalized and analysed given practical constraints arising from limited access to industry controllers, limited capacity of the simulator, and the complexity of the hydropower domain. Of key concern was the design of test scenarios, selection of measures of performance, and data analysis in the face of these constraints. The rationale of the scenario design was to combine representative contingencies within and outside the hydropower scheme, emergent storage problems and different market contexts so that controllers or coordinators would be required to act in different domains. Only by placing controllers in such challenging and time pressured situations could we maximize our chances of seeing the expected benefits of the new display, given the limited length of the experiment. Multiple measures were proposed to capture the quality of in-the-loop coupling between human controllers and the system under various disturbances. The measures of performance include: (1) control quality, which investigates how the new displays tame “temporal complexity” by helping the control team construct a more effective pattern of activities to handle contingencies; and (2) control strategy, which exposes how the new display support the coordination between storage, generation and market to meet the strategic or tangible objectives. The measures of cognition and affect include: (1) situation awareness (SA), which represents controllers’ or coordinators’ degree of cognitive coupling with different time frames and different levels of the hydropower scheme and (2) controllers’ or coordinators’ trust in the supporting displays, and their self-confidence in their own ability to control the hydropower scheme. Through the effort of triangulating the different measures, balancing the elements in designing scenarios, and extracting and integrating raw data from the study, convergent lines of evidence were achieved for evaluation. It was found that the new Functional Displays led the participant teams to a better pattern of work which was reflected in their situation awareness, their discretionary control activity, and the outcome of their control with respect to system productivity and stability. However, limitations of these findings because of the constraints of the experiment are discussed. This research contributes to many theoretical and practical issues in Human-System Interface (HSI). For example, it outlines how some of the principles of ecological interface design (EID) can be used and it highlights the value of using time as a basis for distinguishing interfaces. Moreover, this research provides fruitful insights into the selection and development of measures to assess human control in real world complex work environments. Because a key issue of this thesis is how practical constraints were handled; pragmatic approaches for measuring SA and control were developed. Because industry often performs evaluations under similar intensive constraints, the approaches and solutions developed in this thesis for evaluating novel interfaces could be easily adapted to various industrial settings.

Computing is increasingly pervading the activities of our everyday lives: at work, at home, and out on the town. When designing these pervasive systems there is a need to better understand and incorporate the context of use and yet there are limited empirical investigations into what constitutes this context. The user’s physical and social situation is an important part of their context when operating in an urban environment and thus needs to be understood and included in the interaction design of context-aware pervasive computing. This thesis has combined ideas from human computer interaction (HCI) and architecture to investigate indexicality in interface design as an instrument for incorporating physical and social context of the built environment into context-aware pervasive computing. Indexicality in interface design is a new approach to designing HCI for pervasive computing that relies on knowledge of current context to implicitly communicate between system and user. It reduces the amount of information that needs to be explicitly displayed in the interface while maintaining the usefulness and understandability of the communication.

This study aims to find the answers to how an online interactive video editing tool for teachers to use would be designed. To find out the answers to this, students studying to become teachers and experienced teachers were interviewed and used for observations and usability testing of a prototype. In total there were 27 unique data gathering situations with 11 unique participants. The five teacher students who were participating were all teacher students at Linnaeus University in Växjö. The six experienced teachers have been teaching for many years and are currently lecturing teachers about new technology that can be used in the classroom. The result from interviews, observations and literature search contributed to a list of requirements which in turn became a prototype. What has been discovered is that teachers need a tool which is easy to use with interactions and functions such as adding clickable annotations to clips and creating playlists which will help teachers plan ahead and save time during lectures.

This thesis considers claims of discrimination and the interfaces that six platforms use as companies in the sharing economy. In 2015, Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and an Svirsky did an experiment with Airbnb to test the discrimination of names that sounded distinctly African American. Before and after their findings, there were members of the community who claimed that they had been discriminated against, some suing the company for not upholding their anti-discrimination policy. This leads to the question of how is one able to discriminate against someone whom they have never met and lives thousands of miles away? What information do they have to hold against them? As a result, this thesis provides a rhetorical analysis of the interfaces of six companies of the sharing economy.

No sistema produtivo contemporâneo, o design é uma atividade central, pois responde pelo projeto de bens e serviços. Design não está, todavia, relacionado apenas com as capacidades criativas ou com leituras estéticas do projetista – como faz crer o uso popular da palavra - englobando profissionais dos mais diversos domínios. Um engenheiro eletrônico que projeta circuitos; um engenheiro mecânico que projeta motores; um arquiteto que projeta um edifício; um designer gráfico que projeta uma marca; um analista que projeta um software: todos são designers. Em comum estes profissionais têm o mesmo tipo de problema, e assim o percurso cognitivo destes profissionais é similar. Da mesma forma, espera-se que um designer que projeta um artefato educacional digital também apresente comportamentos semelhantes durante o processo de projeto. Todavia, como é regra para a atividade de design, o projeto de artefato educacionais digitais tem seus desafios. Neste caso específico, o desafio do designer está no fato de que ele não pode projetar sozinho. Até mesmo nas etapas iniciais do projeto - quando se está gerando idéias e explorando conceitos, quando não se tem clara a forma ou mesmo a estrutura do artefato – o designer não pode projetar sozinho. Isto porque, para este tipo de artefato, o conhecimento e as habilidades do designer precisam ser orientadas por educadores e especialistas no domínio. Neste cenário se colocam as questões de pesquisa desta tese, que buscam compreender qual papel o designer tem enquanto membro de uma equipe de desenvolvimento de artefatos digitais educacionais. Como se entende que o designer não pode projetar este tipo de artefato sozinho, os objetivos específicos desta tese relacionam-se à cooperação com outro especialista: o educador. Deseja-se investigar como estes profissionais constroem colaborativamente o espaço do problema; quais estratégias de projeto os designers utilizam; e se há evidências de sobreposição entre os domínios pertinentes ao problema (neste caso, “educação”, “design” e “química”). Utilizando métodos adaptados à análise de atividades de design, investigou-se a atividade de duas duplas – formadas por um designer e por um educador especialista no domínio – buscando regularidades que pudessem responder à tais questões. Os resultados sugerem que a complexidade do tema não é um fator tão marcante para a qualidade do projeto quanto a estratégia utilizada pelo designer. Quando o designer decidiu tentar “brifar” seu colega – a fim de estruturar seu conhecimento sobre o tema para embasar o projeto – o efeito da complexidade do tema se fez sentir. Já quando o designer buscou integrar rapidamente as informações recebidas de seu colega educador ao projeto - sem antes buscar estruturar seu conhecimento sobre o tema – o efeito do tema foi tênue. Nenhuma destas estratégias corresponde à descrição de processos de design reportadas na literatura. Ao utilizar a estratégia de “integrar o mais rápido possível”, o designer deixou claras algumas de suas concepções a respeito dos processos de ensino e aprendizagem; teorias implícitas provavelmente construídas durante sua exposição à educação formal. Ao usar a estratégia “estruturar para depois projetar”, o designer não demonstrou identificar implicações e potenciais estruturais da orientação teórica seguida pelo seu colega. Estes resultados podem fundamentar – em pesquisas futuras - uma discussão a respeito da necessidade da atenção à formação de designers para trabalhar no projeto de artefatos digitais educacionais. / In the contemporary production system, design is a central activity, as it is the mean to provide artifacts and services. Design is not, however, related solely to the creative skills or aesthetic preferences of the designer - as the popular use of the word may seem to - comprising professionals from various fields. An electronic engineer who designs circuits, a mechanical engineer who designs engines, an architect who designs a building, a graphic designer who designs a brand, an analyst who designs software: they are all designers. These professionals have in common the same kind of problem, and thus their cognitive routes are similar. Likewise, it is expected that a designer who designs an educational digital artifact also presents similar behavior during the design process. However, as a rule for the design activity, the design of educational digital artifact has its challenges. In the case of this particular class of problem, the designer's challenge is the fact that he cannot design alone. Even in the early stages of the project – idea generation and concept exploration, when there is no clear shape or structure of the artifact - the designer cannot design alone. This is because, for this type of artifact, the knowledge and skills of the designer need to be guided by educators and specialists in the field. In this scenario, the research questions of this thesis is raised, which seeks to understand what role the designer has as a member of a team of educational development of digital artifacts. How does he build the problem space? What strategies does he use when he has knowledge to design alone? How do the domains of design and education intersect and overlap? Using methods adapted to the analysis of design activities, the activity of two pairs of subjects were recorded – the pairs consisting of a designer and an expert educator in the field - looking for regularities that could answer the questions of the thesis. The results suggest that the complexity of the subject area (chemistry) was not a factor as remarkable for the quality of the project as the strategy used by the designer. When the designer decided to "brief" his colleague - to structure his knowledge on the subject area to support of the project - the effect of the complexity of the issue was felt. But when the designer sought to quickly integrate the information received from his fellow educator within the project - without first seeking to structure his knowledge on the subject - the effect of topic was tenuous. None of these strategies corresponds to the description of design processes reported in the literature. By using the strategy “integrate as soon as possible”, the designer made his perception about the processes of teaching and learning clear: implicit theories probably built during his exposure to formal education. By using the strategy "structure and then design”, the designer did not spot potential structural implications of the theoretical orientation followed by his colleague. These results support a discussion about the need of special education for designers who will work with educational digital artifacts.

O crescente uso das tecnologias digitais no dia-a-dia das pessoas gerou diversas mudanças de comportamento; tendências colaborativas de troca e compartilhamento de informações, ideias, conhecimentos e bens materiais passam a integrar não apenas a vida social dos usuários da internet, mas também surgem no ambiente escolar e de trabalho, mediadas por diferentes interfaces e dispositivos digitais. Nesse contexto, esta pesquisa pretende compreender como as ferramentas que surgiram a partir do uso das novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TICs) impulsionaram ou facilitaram a colaboração entre usuários na internet, abordando os principais aspectos e necessidades da colaboração em ambientes virtuais e relacionando-os com conhecimentos da área do design de interfaces O principal objetivo do estudo é propor elementos de interface que, integrados aos ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem (AVAs), favoreçam a realização de atividades colaborativas. Para tanto, após revisão bibliográfica e análise de similares, foi realizada uma análise das ferramentas colaborativas na interface do AVA Moodle, sob o aspecto dos mecanismos de conversação, coordenação e percepção de Preece, Rogers e Sharp (2005). Em seguida, foi aplicado um questionário com professores da área de design a respeito do uso do Moodle e/ou de demais tecnologias digitais em atividades colaborativas com os alunos. Os resultados dessa etapa foram discutidos em uma oficina com especialistas do campo de design a fim de avaliar as possibilidades de implementação de elementos gráficos e ferramentas computacionais na interface do Moodle que pudessem facilitar a colaboração entre seus usuários. Esses procedimentos elucidaram um conjunto de necessidades, requisitos, elementos e funcionalidades de interface com vistas a apoiar a colaboração em AVAs e/ou outras plataformas digitais. / The increasing use of digital technologies in people's daily lives has generated a number of behavioral changes; collaborative tendencies of exchange and sharing of information, ideas, knowledge and material goods integrate not only the social life of internet users, but also arise in the school and work environment, mediated by different interfaces and digital devices. In this sense, this research aims to understand how the tools that have emerged from the use of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have driven or facilitated Internet user’s collaboration, addressing the main aspects and needs of collaboration in virtual environments, relating them to interface design topics. The main objective of the study is to propose interface elements that, integrated to the interface of learning management systems (LMS), promote the accomplishment of collaborative activities To do so, after a literature review and the analysis of interfaces with collaborative functions, an analysis of Moodle's collaborative tools was carried out considering the mechanisms of conversation, coordination and awareness (PREECE; ROGERS; SHARP, 2005). Then, a questionnaire was applied with professors from the design area regarding the use of Moodle and/or other digital technologies in collaborative activities with their students. The results of this stage were discussed in a workshop with design experts, in order to evaluate the possibilities of implementing graphic elements and computational tools in Moodle's interface that could facilitate user's collaboration. These procedures have generated a set of needs, requirements, interface elements and functionalities to facilitate collaboration processes in learning management systems and/or other digital platforms.

No sistema produtivo contemporâneo, o design é uma atividade central, pois responde pelo projeto de bens e serviços. Design não está, todavia, relacionado apenas com as capacidades criativas ou com leituras estéticas do projetista – como faz crer o uso popular da palavra - englobando profissionais dos mais diversos domínios. Um engenheiro eletrônico que projeta circuitos; um engenheiro mecânico que projeta motores; um arquiteto que projeta um edifício; um designer gráfico que projeta uma marca; um analista que projeta um software: todos são designers. Em comum estes profissionais têm o mesmo tipo de problema, e assim o percurso cognitivo destes profissionais é similar. Da mesma forma, espera-se que um designer que projeta um artefato educacional digital também apresente comportamentos semelhantes durante o processo de projeto. Todavia, como é regra para a atividade de design, o projeto de artefato educacionais digitais tem seus desafios. Neste caso específico, o desafio do designer está no fato de que ele não pode projetar sozinho. Até mesmo nas etapas iniciais do projeto - quando se está gerando idéias e explorando conceitos, quando não se tem clara a forma ou mesmo a estrutura do artefato – o designer não pode projetar sozinho. Isto porque, para este tipo de artefato, o conhecimento e as habilidades do designer precisam ser orientadas por educadores e especialistas no domínio. Neste cenário se colocam as questões de pesquisa desta tese, que buscam compreender qual papel o designer tem enquanto membro de uma equipe de desenvolvimento de artefatos digitais educacionais. Como se entende que o designer não pode projetar este tipo de artefato sozinho, os objetivos específicos desta tese relacionam-se à cooperação com outro especialista: o educador. Deseja-se investigar como estes profissionais constroem colaborativamente o espaço do problema; quais estratégias de projeto os designers utilizam; e se há evidências de sobreposição entre os domínios pertinentes ao problema (neste caso, “educação”, “design” e “química”). Utilizando métodos adaptados à análise de atividades de design, investigou-se a atividade de duas duplas – formadas por um designer e por um educador especialista no domínio – buscando regularidades que pudessem responder à tais questões. Os resultados sugerem que a complexidade do tema não é um fator tão marcante para a qualidade do projeto quanto a estratégia utilizada pelo designer. Quando o designer decidiu tentar “brifar” seu colega – a fim de estruturar seu conhecimento sobre o tema para embasar o projeto – o efeito da complexidade do tema se fez sentir. Já quando o designer buscou integrar rapidamente as informações recebidas de seu colega educador ao projeto - sem antes buscar estruturar seu conhecimento sobre o tema – o efeito do tema foi tênue. Nenhuma destas estratégias corresponde à descrição de processos de design reportadas na literatura. Ao utilizar a estratégia de “integrar o mais rápido possível”, o designer deixou claras algumas de suas concepções a respeito dos processos de ensino e aprendizagem; teorias implícitas provavelmente construídas durante sua exposição à educação formal. Ao usar a estratégia “estruturar para depois projetar”, o designer não demonstrou identificar implicações e potenciais estruturais da orientação teórica seguida pelo seu colega. Estes resultados podem fundamentar – em pesquisas futuras - uma discussão a respeito da necessidade da atenção à formação de designers para trabalhar no projeto de artefatos digitais educacionais. / In the contemporary production system, design is a central activity, as it is the mean to provide artifacts and services. Design is not, however, related solely to the creative skills or aesthetic preferences of the designer - as the popular use of the word may seem to - comprising professionals from various fields. An electronic engineer who designs circuits, a mechanical engineer who designs engines, an architect who designs a building, a graphic designer who designs a brand, an analyst who designs software: they are all designers. These professionals have in common the same kind of problem, and thus their cognitive routes are similar. Likewise, it is expected that a designer who designs an educational digital artifact also presents similar behavior during the design process. However, as a rule for the design activity, the design of educational digital artifact has its challenges. In the case of this particular class of problem, the designer's challenge is the fact that he cannot design alone. Even in the early stages of the project – idea generation and concept exploration, when there is no clear shape or structure of the artifact - the designer cannot design alone. This is because, for this type of artifact, the knowledge and skills of the designer need to be guided by educators and specialists in the field. In this scenario, the research questions of this thesis is raised, which seeks to understand what role the designer has as a member of a team of educational development of digital artifacts. How does he build the problem space? What strategies does he use when he has knowledge to design alone? How do the domains of design and education intersect and overlap? Using methods adapted to the analysis of design activities, the activity of two pairs of subjects were recorded – the pairs consisting of a designer and an expert educator in the field - looking for regularities that could answer the questions of the thesis. The results suggest that the complexity of the subject area (chemistry) was not a factor as remarkable for the quality of the project as the strategy used by the designer. When the designer decided to "brief" his colleague - to structure his knowledge on the subject area to support of the project - the effect of the complexity of the issue was felt. But when the designer sought to quickly integrate the information received from his fellow educator within the project - without first seeking to structure his knowledge on the subject - the effect of topic was tenuous. None of these strategies corresponds to the description of design processes reported in the literature. By using the strategy “integrate as soon as possible”, the designer made his perception about the processes of teaching and learning clear: implicit theories probably built during his exposure to formal education. By using the strategy "structure and then design”, the designer did not spot potential structural implications of the theoretical orientation followed by his colleague. These results support a discussion about the need of special education for designers who will work with educational digital artifacts.

O crescente uso das tecnologias digitais no dia-a-dia das pessoas gerou diversas mudanças de comportamento; tendências colaborativas de troca e compartilhamento de informações, ideias, conhecimentos e bens materiais passam a integrar não apenas a vida social dos usuários da internet, mas também surgem no ambiente escolar e de trabalho, mediadas por diferentes interfaces e dispositivos digitais. Nesse contexto, esta pesquisa pretende compreender como as ferramentas que surgiram a partir do uso das novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação (TICs) impulsionaram ou facilitaram a colaboração entre usuários na internet, abordando os principais aspectos e necessidades da colaboração em ambientes virtuais e relacionando-os com conhecimentos da área do design de interfaces O principal objetivo do estudo é propor elementos de interface que, integrados aos ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem (AVAs), favoreçam a realização de atividades colaborativas. Para tanto, após revisão bibliográfica e análise de similares, foi realizada uma análise das ferramentas colaborativas na interface do AVA Moodle, sob o aspecto dos mecanismos de conversação, coordenação e percepção de Preece, Rogers e Sharp (2005). Em seguida, foi aplicado um questionário com professores da área de design a respeito do uso do Moodle e/ou de demais tecnologias digitais em atividades colaborativas com os alunos. Os resultados dessa etapa foram discutidos em uma oficina com especialistas do campo de design a fim de avaliar as possibilidades de implementação de elementos gráficos e ferramentas computacionais na interface do Moodle que pudessem facilitar a colaboração entre seus usuários. Esses procedimentos elucidaram um conjunto de necessidades, requisitos, elementos e funcionalidades de interface com vistas a apoiar a colaboração em AVAs e/ou outras plataformas digitais. / The increasing use of digital technologies in people's daily lives has generated a number of behavioral changes; collaborative tendencies of exchange and sharing of information, ideas, knowledge and material goods integrate not only the social life of internet users, but also arise in the school and work environment, mediated by different interfaces and digital devices. In this sense, this research aims to understand how the tools that have emerged from the use of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have driven or facilitated Internet user’s collaboration, addressing the main aspects and needs of collaboration in virtual environments, relating them to interface design topics. The main objective of the study is to propose interface elements that, integrated to the interface of learning management systems (LMS), promote the accomplishment of collaborative activities To do so, after a literature review and the analysis of interfaces with collaborative functions, an analysis of Moodle's collaborative tools was carried out considering the mechanisms of conversation, coordination and awareness (PREECE; ROGERS; SHARP, 2005). Then, a questionnaire was applied with professors from the design area regarding the use of Moodle and/or other digital technologies in collaborative activities with their students. The results of this stage were discussed in a workshop with design experts, in order to evaluate the possibilities of implementing graphic elements and computational tools in Moodle's interface that could facilitate user's collaboration. These procedures have generated a set of needs, requirements, interface elements and functionalities to facilitate collaboration processes in learning management systems and/or other digital platforms.

The following bachelor thesis explores the design of a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliant graphical user interface, for an administrative school system. The work presents the process of developing and evaluating a web-based prototype, a platform chosen because of its availability. The aim is to investigate if the design increases the caregivers perception of being in control over personal data, both their own and data related to children in their care. The methods for investigating this subject are grounded in real world research, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.   The results indicate that the users perceive the prototype to be useful, easy to use, easy to learn and that they are satisfied with it. The results also point towards the users feeling of control of both their own and their child’s personal data when using the prototype. The users agree that a higher sense of control also increases their sense of security.